- In the state only 45.3 percent deliveries are institutional and only half of the deliveries (50.2 percent) take place in the presence of a doctor/nurse/LHV/ANM/other health personnel (NFHS 3, 2009). Does the state have high rate of abortion? Collecting data on abortions is difficult. It is very personal, intimate and often a painful event.
- There is a need to know: what is the level of spontaneous and induced abortion in Himachal Pradesh and what are the factors behind it?
There is vast literature of demographic transition. It is believed that in the West demographic transition occurred in two phases: first, in response to socio-economic development and modernization; and second time in response to developing separation between sex and reproduction due to development of contraception. The second transition has produced the below replacement fertility. In a recent article Chesnais (2000) identified the following factors behind demographic transition to below replacement level fertility: (1) social atomization and related feminism; (2) implementation of collectivized pension benefits; (3) globalized nomadism; (4) youth loss of majority; and (5) the “end of work” syndrome”. In simple terms it means that individualization, increasing freedom of women, pension benefits, migration and economic deprivation (because many youths are earning less than their parents and there is rise in unemployment) have changed the calculus of fertility in favor of low fertility.
Fertility levels are an outcome of a number of factors:
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Age of marriage and length of reproductive period
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Sexuality within marriage
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Use of modern family planning methods – beginning of the use of spacing methods and the age of sterilization
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Abortion practices
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